


The Shape of Things

by whataflammableheart



Category: All the Young Dudes - Fandom, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adopted Children, Adult Harry, Angst, Canon Compliant, Dreams, F/M, Gay Male Character, Genderfluid Character, Harry Potter Next Generation, Implied/referenced sexual coercion, M/M, Metamorphmagus, Original Character(s), Orphans, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:49:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25167226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whataflammableheart/pseuds/whataflammableheart
Summary: In September 2016 Teddy visits the flat that Remus lived in between wars and discovers that he and his father had more in common than he thought.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin/Original Male Character(s), Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Teddy Lupin & Andromeda Black Tonks, Teddy Lupin & Harry Potter, Teddy Lupin/Original Male Character(s), Teddy Lupin/Victoire Weasley
Comments: 19
Kudos: 126





	The Shape of Things

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [All the Young Dudes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057010) by [MsKingBean89](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsKingBean89/pseuds/MsKingBean89). 



> Welcome to my own personal trans fuck you to the-author-who-shall-not-be-named! Tonks has always struck me as a super trans character (a shapeshifter who insists on going by a gender neutral name?? come on!!) and recently I've been really intrigued by Remus and Tonks' relationship as something queer and not necessarily romantic. What might they recognize in each other that goes beyond language or labels? This is an exploration of those possibilities through the eyes of their also queer/genderfluid shapeshifter son. (Please note: I am using trans/genderfluid to describe Tonks and Teddy's experiences, but neither of them explicitly use that language in the story) 
> 
> This fic lives in the world of All The Young Dudes, which has quickly become my absolute favorite Wolfstar fanfiction. If you haven't read it, I think everything will still make sense, but I cannot overstate how beautifully done it is and how perfectly it captures all that is Remus Lupin, so I would strongly recommend checking it out! MsKingBean89 wrote an epilogue of sorts called Out of the Blue, where Teddy meets Grant, the OC Remus dated and lived with while Sirius was in prison. This story picks up directly following that encounter. It is more or less canon compliant if we pretend Cursed Child doesn't exist, which I try to.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> (CW: The moment of sexual coercion happens in a memory between Teddy and an OC. They are already in a sexual relationship but the OC convinces Teddy to do something specific that he doesn't want to. If you want to skip over it it starts with "His stomach turned as a memory flashed, unbidden, into his mind." and ends with "He could have been anyone. Done anything.")

The old key felt heavier than physically possible in his palm. He couldn’t let go of it. Even when he slid his hand into his trousers pocket, he couldn’t loosen his fist, something in him certain that if the tiny treasure slipped into the folds of cotton on his thigh it would disappear there.

His father might have held this key once. His father who had been stubborn and private and loved. Tortured, yes, but human. Had he given it to Grant? Had it been a gesture of commitment? Maybe it had been a romantic moment, sweet and dripping with promises. And Grant had handed it to Teddy as if _he_ had some claim over it, over this man his father had been.

When he was out of Grant’s sight Teddy stopped on the spot. He thought about Apparating to the flat right away. Grant had said there might be magic, but Teddy wasn’t so afraid of defensive spells. If you tried to burst through them with force of course they would do their job and bite back, but with some patience they acted more like a bad knot. With enough time, a few backtracks maybe, eventually you could usually find the right strand to pull and untangle the whole thing. And Teddy wanted to believe he would be faster if the magic he was unraveling belonged to his father. Some fact of shared brain chemistry, some undeniable proof of relation.

But it was the thought of opening the door that held him rooted to the street. The thought of layers of dust over proof of a life lived before he was even a possibility. No, he couldn’t face that alone. If someone had asked him he might have said he was doing it out of loyalty to Harry, some sense of justice. After all, didn’t Harry have just as much, if not more, of a right to these memories as he did? But the truth, tugging deep inside him, was that he was scared of what he would find.

\--

The Potters’ home was bright and warm in the way that houses tend to absorb the love and magic inside of them. It was white with friendly green shutters, neatly stamped on a spacious plot of thick lawn on the outskirts of Godric’s Hollow. Teddy could just recall, at the edges of his memories, the day Harry and Ginny had bought the house, Ginny’s stomach round and taught under her robes, five-year-old Teddy letting go of his godfather’s hand to run through the then-empty rooms. It had been hard to imagine, then, the house full to bursting with family, but now the walls of the Potters’ home could hardly contain its inhabitants.

As Teddy strode up the garden path, Nimbus, Lily’s plump black cat, darted between bushes, enchanted by the sparrows that chattered in them. A broomstick lay forgotten on the front porch, with a trail of muddy footprints leading to the door, as of yet undiscovered by Harry, Teddy imagined.

Ginny opened the door just as Teddy had raised his fist to knock. She was still in her Auror robes, but had let her hair down from its practical ponytail, so that it swung cheerfully around her shoulders. She grinned when she saw him.

“Teddy! Just heard the Apparition chimes, I didn’t know you were coming ‘round tonight!” She stepped out of the way to let him in, but only stopped her greeting long enough to give him a quick peck on the cheek. “I’m afraid we don’t have much for dinner. Harry took Lily up to Ron and Hermione’s today, said he’d get her and Hugo to help him de-gnome again. You know they can never seem to keep that infestation down and Hermione’s so soft on them.” She paused for a breath and to flick her wand shrewdly to clean the footprints on the porch, having noticed them with a raised eyebrow. Teddy unlaced his boots as she closed the door and continued. “He–Harry, that is–is just heating up some leftovers now. I’m sure we’d have enough if you want…?” She finally trailed off and Teddy straightened up.

“Oh that’s alright, I wasn’t planning to stay. Thanks Ginny.” He smiled at her. “I just– Um.” He was surprised when his voice caught a little, wanting for a moment nothing more than to be folded in her arms as he had been so many times when he was smaller. She was more of a parent to him than Remus had ever had the chance to be. “I wanted to talk to Harry about something, if that’s alright?” Ginny frowned a little, catching the emotion in Teddy’s voice, but had the tact not to comment.

“Of course, dear. He’s in the kitchen. I’m just going to pop out of these,” she gestured to her work clothes and started towards the stairs. Teddy could hear Lily’s radio floating down them, and was grateful she probably hadn’t heard him come in. He loved the youngest Potter, but wasn’t sure he could handle being hung on by a boisterous nine-year-old just now.

Harry was at the counter when Teddy walked into the kitchen, piling peas onto three plates beside helpings of turkey. The setting sun reached its fingers through the windows, skimming over cheery yellow cabinets and the red checked cloth on the table. Neither of the Potters had much of an eye for interior decorating, but they put enough care and enthusiasm into their home that it hardly mattered.

“Thought I heard you in the hall, wasn’t expecting you tonight.” Harry said, putting down the pea dish and turning to face Teddy. “What’s up, Ted?” Harry smiled in the way he had of making whoever he was speaking to feel a little more special. The evening sun winked on his glasses. Teddy pulled the key out of his pocket, suddenly not sure where to start. In this home, where he had learned to fly a broomstick and to patch up scraped knees the muggle way, where he had eaten meals and held crying toddlers, the thought of a flat belonging to his long dead, war hero father felt impossible. Homes were for people who were alive.

“I met someone who knew my dad,” he said, because not saying anything wasn’t an option. Harry paused in the middle of wiping his hands on a dishtowel.

“Oh?”

“There’s a flat in London that was his–Remus’. He left it to this man, Grant. He gave me the key. Said I could have it. There are pictures and things, I guess.” Harry frowned.

“Are you sure he had the right person? Remus never mentioned a Grant.”

“Well no, he–he wouldn’t have.” Teddy felt distinctly awkward. Harry knew he was queer. He had walked in on Teddy and his first boyfriend when Luther had visited one summer. On that occasion Harry had turned redder than his wife’s hair, spluttered something about being safe, and failed to meet Teddy’s eyes for the two days following. Teddy knew his godfather didn’t really mind, but it wasn’t something they discussed. “Grant was my dad’s… partner. For twelve years. He recognized me, looked like he’d seen a ghost. He knew Sirius, and he knew my dad was a werewolf, and I’m pretty sure there aren’t that many Remus Lupins to begin with.”

“Partner,” Harry repeated, blankly.

“He was gay,” Teddy hesitated. “Or I guess he always had been, until my mum.” Saying it out loud was making it feel more real, and through the fog of shock and disbelief, Teddy felt something like excitement. Here was something he and Remus had in common, something beyond his face and long, lanky build. Something about the mystery of his father that he could understand better than Harry, or his Gran, or the other Order members.

Harry still hadn’t spoken, so Teddy barreled on. “Grant said my dad and Sirius Black were together, when they were at school. And I guess maybe after too, he said he moved out when Sirius got back from Azkaban. Like maybe they got back together. Do you think they did?”

“Remus and Sirius?” Harry sat down at the kitchen table, absently running his hand through his untidy hair. “They never said… I don’t know. Might’ve.” He looked up at Teddy. “Sounds like there’s a lot they never told me.”

“Grant said he was a really private person, my dad,” Teddy offered. Harry nodded, with a sad sort of smile. Teddy felt the urge to comfort Harry, but was at a complete loss as to how. For a long time Teddy had imagined Remus to be Harry’s friend and comrade in the war. It had taken years for him to realize what Harry had really lost when first Sirius, and then Remus, had been murdered. Men who he’d looked up to, idolized, trusted. Men who had protected him for the few short years they knew each other, and, it seemed, shielded him from the details of their lives.

“I wondered,” Teddy continued, “if you would come with me? To see the flat?”

“’Course, Ted. Yeah, I’d love to.” Harry put himself back together now, his strong parent mask clicking seamlessly back into place with a warm smile and another flash of his glasses. It made Teddy feel safe, despite himself. Harry never had this feeling, of trusting someone older to make everything okay, he thought. Neither did Remus.

\--

The defensive spells around the apartment were old, and some were rendered obsolete by the death of the caster. Teddy didn’t really need Harry’s assistance, which Harry accepted gracefully with a gesture of defeat. Harry’s magic was powerful, stronger than Teddy’s and full of fierce, pure intention. But power wasn’t much use in untangling spells.

With defensive magic it was about finding the heart of the thing, understanding from what well of feeling the caster had summoned the magic. Love, fear, greed. Then you just needed a little tug in the right place. This was one of the many ways that Hufflepuff’s patient, diligent magic overpowered showier witches and wizards, Professor Bones had always said. Harry always joked that maybe he’d be better at it if he’d finished school.

The puzzle of it was satisfying, enough so that Teddy didn’t linger on the web of complicated, often painful, emotions tied into his father’s casting. But when the last one had fallen away and all that stood between him and Remus’ old home was a muggle lock and a muggle key, Teddy stopped. He looked to Harry.

“Are you ready?” Harry asked. Teddy swallowed.

“I don’t know.”

“Look, Ted. No matter what’s in there, no matter what we find– your father was a good man. He loved you, okay? And I love you, and so does your Gran and Ginny and every Potter and Weasley alive. You have a family who loves you. Nothing changes that, okay?”

“He didn’t.” It left Teddy’s mouth before he could even think it.

“What?”

“Have a family. He was an orphan.” He didn’t say, _like me,_ or, _like you._ “He grew up in a home for boys.”

Something that might have been close to anger flashed over Harry’s face for a heartbeat, but before Teddy could fully register it, it was gone and Harry clapped a hand on Teddy’s shoulder.

“Well then I’m sure he would be really happy to know things are different for you.” Teddy nodded, trying to swallow away his guilt. Harry gestured towards the doorknob with his wand. “Do you want me to…?” Teddy shook his head.

“No, I want to do it this way.” He pulled the key out of his pocket, contemplating the peeling yellow paint and the brass number 9 on the door. He took in the concrete landing once more, the smell of mildew and city. He slid the key into the lock and imagined Grant’s thick fingers making the same motion every evening for twelve years, coming home to his partner, lover, friend. He imagined Grant calling out to Remus, Remus smiling and his eyes crinkling like in the photograph Teddy kept in his wallet. With a deep breath, Teddy turned the key.

It stuck. He tried again, but it wouldn’t budge. Panicking, he rattled the doorknob.

Harry placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Let me try?” Teddy nodded, backing away. He watched as Harry pulled on the doorknob with one hand, and gently rocked the key with the other. After a moment, it clicked open. “Just a sticky lock,” he smiled. His hand was still on the doorknob, but he didn’t turn it. He looked to Teddy, eyebrows raised, waiting for an okay. Teddy nodded. He was as ready as he’d ever be.

The door opened into a carpeted living room, sparsely furnished and air thick with dust. On the wall facing the door there was a row of windows, spilling streetlight onto a table covered in cardboard boxes. Harry flipped the light switch by the door to reveal that the boxes themselves were pristine and crisp, clearly the only things in the room preserved by magic.

Teddy took a few steps inside to see a mismatched couch and armchair facing a bulky, ancient looking television perched in front of a comically out of place brick fireplace. To their right towered a giant bookcase, filled with books and—Teddy’s heart leapt—records. Everything was covered in a solid inch of dust, and was just a little untidy, as if someone had left for vacation in a hurry but intended to come back soon. There were gaps on the bookcase where someone (Remus, Teddy reminded himself) might have pulled down only the books most essential for wherever he had been going.

Behind Teddy, Harry peered into the doorway to their left. Teddy, overwhelmed by the sheer intimacy of the abandoned living room, followed into the cramped kitchen. A grimy window illuminated the old appliances and cracked counters. Two tea mugs sat upside down in the drying rack. Harry reached out as if to pick one up, but only brushed a chip in its handle with his fingers before letting his hand drop again.

Teddy understood. It felt as if they moved anything some delicate balance would be broken. The apartment would no longer be a window back in time and would transform into what it really was, a collection of dusty rooms once lived in by someone long dead.

Teddy turned, ready to face the living room again, and heard the floor creak as Harry followed. This time he took measured steps across the carpet and down the short hallway beside the bookshelf. On one side was a bathroom, decked out in hideous green tile and pink appliances. Teddy couldn’t help but chuckle, and it felt like some spell of silence had been broken. Harry let out a low whistle.

“You said he lived here for _twelve years?_ ”

Teddy laughed. “I think longer, Grant was just here for twelve.”

“I guess maybe you’d get used to it?”

“I don’t know if I could.” Harry shook his head, agreeing, and something in the air felt lighter as they turned to the last door. It was only open a jar, but Teddy knew it would be the bedroom before he opened it. He clicked the light on.

One bed. Two bedside tables. One dresser. The indisputability of it washed over him. Remus had lived here, first with Sirius and then with Grant, and there was only one bed. He had been comfortably, domestically, unquestionably gay for the majority of his too-short life. Teddy chanced a glance at Harry, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. Harry gave him a reassuring smile, his face a perfect, unreadable mask. Teddy turned to the closet door.

The inside was sparse– a single set of dress robes, a patchy muggle suit, a puffer jacket. On the ground were more cardboard boxes, the one on top open to reveal stacks of photographs inside. Teddy held his breath as he lifted the lid further. There was his dad, looking younger than in his wedding photo but not by much, stretched out on the living room couch, reading. It was a muggle photo, probably taken by Grant. It was proof that he had been here, and these boxes would be full of more, proof of a whole life. Teddy’s head spun.

“Ted?” Harry asked, gently. Teddy showed Harry the photo wordlessly, and Harry smiled. “Do you want to look at the rest?”

“No, I think I’ll– not today. I’ll come back.” Teddy put the photo back where he found it and Harry nodded.

They made their way back to the living room and Teddy stopped at the bookshelf, eyes skimming over a haphazard collection of muggle and wizard books, mixed together and organized in a way that must have only ever made sense to Remus himself. He bent and thumbed through the records, but found that he was only taking in colors, not able to focus on the titles. He suddenly felt desperate to leave, desperate to be anywhere with living people and moving air and without dust. He stood up to tell his godfather, but found that Harry wasn’t looking at him.

Harry had floated over to the table with the boxes, and was now rooted to the spot, clutching another stack of photographs, his eyes damp. Whatever it was, Teddy was sure he wasn’t ready for it, but it felt wrong to leave Harry alone.

He approached, placing a careful hand on Harry’s shoulder and peering over it to look at the picture that had stopped his godfather.

Remus was in the center of the frame, but he was clearly not the subject of the moving photograph. A young, handsome man who Teddy recognized as Sirius Black was dancing around him, dark hair pulled back from his face, holding a laughing baby by the armpits. Sirius swung the baby in circles around Remus, as if the baby was flying. Remus looked a little bemused, maybe unsure what to do with the child, but when his eyes met Sirius’ he couldn’t help but grin. Teddy looked back up at Harry and it clicked.

“That’s you.” Harry nodded. He handed the stack of pictures to Teddy and removed his glasses to dab at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. Teddy quickly looked back at the photo, not sure what to say.

They all looked so happy. If Harry’s mum and dad had lived, this is how he would have grown up. Loved on all sides, doted on by these young, happy men as much as if they were a second set of parents. And Teddy would never have been thought of. Teddy’s stomach clenched. He flipped the photograph to the back of the stack.

The next photo was also of Remus and Sirius. This time they were sitting on a couch. Teddy glanced up to confirm that it was the same couch, but much more worn and sun-bleached now. Sirius’ arm was draped over Remus’ shoulders, and Remus was asleep, head resting on Sirius’ chest. In sleep his face looked peaceful, younger than in any picture Teddy had seen. As Teddy watched he nuzzled a little closer into Sirius, and Sirius stopped winking goofily at the camera to look down at him, a small, sweet smile replacing the gaudy one from before.

Teddy felt the same clicking in his chest that he had felt when he stumbled upon Lance Thornfeld and Hector Greenwich kissing in the Hufflepuff common room when he was thirteen. It was beautiful. So natural that he couldn’t believe he’d never seen the picture before. Like a piece of himself he’d been looking for.

He offered it to a now-put together Harry, who smiled vaguely, clearly not as affected. Harry flipped through the rest of the stack while Teddy watched. Sirius was in every photo. It was as if someone had gone through photo albums and cleared out any trace of him, which, Teddy supposed, wasn’t altogether unlikely.

There was Sirius with a motorcycle, grease smeared on his face, Sirius and Remus at a wedding, Sirius with his arm around a very pregnant Lily, Sirius wrapping a stag’s antlers in tinsel (“That’s my dad,” Harry laughed.), Sirius and James wrestling while Peter Pettigrew cheered them on.

When they reached the picture with baby Harry again Teddy offered it to him. “You should take it,” he said. Harry smiled.

“Thanks Ted.” He pocketed it, and on a whim Teddy did the same with the picture beneath it, of Remus and Sirius on the couch. He set the rest on the table.

“Can we go now? I need to– I don’t think I can be here much longer.” Harry nodded, catching Teddy’s eye with an understanding smile.

“’Course. Let’s go.”

They locked the door behind them and cast a simple ward, all that was really necessary outside of a war. In the dark back alley where they had Apparated Teddy felt like he could breathe again. And with breath, came feeling. Feeling so big it was nameless.

“Hey, Harry?” Harry turned, waiting, but Teddy didn’t have anything to say. Instead, he closed the distance between them and hugged him, squeezing hard. Harry let out a surprised puff of air, but hugged him back.

“Hey. You’re okay,” he said. And before Teddy knew what was happening, he was crying. Crying for a string of parentless children and senseless deaths, crying for a war that had torn his father’s life apart, crying for an innocent young man in a leather jacket who had spent thirteen years in prison.

But maybe most of all, crying because he _was_ okay. He felt safe here, in his godfather’s arms. And he would go home now to the woman who raised him and they would say goodnight and sleep soundly and be okay. And all of that would be true, and his father and mother and grandfather and James and Lily would all still be gone. And in order to keep living they just had to let that be okay too.

\--

“Gran, were my parents in love?” Andromeda turned away from the rag she had been supervising as it wiped down the kitchen counters to raise her eyebrows.

“Of course, they loved each other very much.”

“Yeah, but I mean. Were they like, _in love_ with each other?” Teddy hadn’t taken the picture of Remus and Sirius out of his breast pocket since getting home from the flat, but he could feel it there, stiff against his chest.

“Where is this coming from, love?” Teddy bit his lip.

“When I was with Harry today, we were… We went to my dad’s old flat. Where he lived between the wars.” Andromeda frowned.

“I didn’t know there was a flat.”

“No, me neither,” Teddy clarified quickly, “I ran into someone who knew him. Actually, an ex-partner, who lived with him there.”

“You just… ran into her?” Andromeda looked suspicious, as she often did of lucky coincidences.

“Um, him, actually.” Her eyebrows shot up again. “He owns a record store that Vic and I went to this summer, and he recognized me. I went back today and I mean, he definitely knew things you’d have to be close to my dad to know. He’s a muggle but he knew he was a wizard and a werewolf. And he gave me a key. So I got Harry, and we went.” Andromeda leaned back against the counter behind her.

“I’m glad you didn’t go alone,” was all she said. Teddy pulled the picture out of his pocket and glanced down at it once more before handing it to her. Sirius winked at him.

“Grant, the guy from the record store, said he and Sirius Black were together since they were in school, until…” Teddy trailed off, watching Andromeda examine the photograph. He could practically hear her mind whirring. When she finally looked up, she placed the picture on the counter, and Teddy’s eyes couldn’t help but follow it, reluctant to be separated.

“It certainly explains some things.”

“Like what?” Andromeda gazed at Teddy for a moment before nodding to herself, as if a decision had been made.

“Tea?” She asked, already turning to the kettle.

“Sure,” Teddy agreed. Andromeda tapped the kettle with her wand and busied herself with pulling out mugs and tea leaves as she spoke.

“Nymphadora was certainly head over heels for your father. I’d never seen her like that with anyone. But I don’t think marriage was on either of their minds before… Well, before she got pregnant.” Andromeda paused, but didn’t look up. Teddy couldn’t think of anything to say. He’d been an accident, an inconvenient mistake in the midst of a war.

“Oh.”

“You have to understand, dear, they did love each other a lot. I think, at that point, Dora was the only one who poor Remus would open up to. I always got the impression that she knew more about him than anyone else in the Order after… well, after Sirius died. They weren’t close until then, which now I suppose…” she trailed off vaguely. The kettle whistled. Teddy watched her, silent, as she poured and added milk to both cups. When she turned to offer him his mug he took it numbly, and she smoothed a gentle hand over his cheek.

“Teddy. They were happy, love. Truly. You made them so happy. I wish you could have seen the way they both doted on you. Remus never liked babies much before but he _adored_ you. And they were good to each other.” Teddy took a sip of his tea. It burned his tongue. “Their wedding is still one of the sweetest ones I’ve ever been too.” She smiled at the memory. “Ted was crying buckets.”

“But he was gay.” Andromeda dropped her eyes to the photograph again and shrugged.

“Maybe. Aren’t you the one who told me a person doesn’t have to be one thing or the other?”

“You didn’t see the look on Grant’s face when I showed him the wedding photo. They’d known each other since they were teenagers, and in all that time… sometimes people are just gay, Gran.”

“Hm.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what, dear?”

“That I was an accident?” Andromeda frowned.

“I don’t believe in accidents, my love.” This time Teddy raised his eyebrows. “You are one of the best things to ever happen to me, and you were one of the best things to ever happen to your parents too. Before you, Dora thought Remus was ready to give up. You gave him hope, a reason to fight.”

“So you’re saying if I’d never been born, he would still be alive.”

“Teddy, no, I–”

“I’m going to finish this in my room. ‘Night, Gran.” Teddy slid the photograph from the counter and left the room before Andromeda could protest. He felt childish, storming off, but he couldn’t stand to hear her keep going. He would apologize in the morning. Tears were building in his throat again, and they crashed over him as soon as he reached his bedroom.

He glared at his sleeping father in the photograph still clutched in his hand, and for a moment, he hated him. For being secretive, for being too heroic to stay away from the war, for sleeping with a younger woman who was madly in love with him when he apparently wasn’t even attracted to her. _Weak_.

The thought surprised him. He had always thought of his father as the epitome of strength. But he couldn’t understand it. Had the marriage been purely out of obligation? In his grief over Sirius, had Teddy’s mother just been a body? Convenient and there and willing to fuck him?

His stomach turned as a memory flashed, unbidden, into his mind.

_“Can you turn it into a cunt?” Luther ground his palm down where it rested on Teddy’s crotch, as if it wasn’t clear what he was talking about._

_“What? Um, I don’t know.” A lie._

_“Aren’t you curious?”_

_“No.” Another lie._

_“Try.”_

_“What? Now?”_

_“Yeah, go on.”_

_“C’mon, no. Why would you even–?”_

_“Aren’t you ever curious? What it would feel like to be straight?”_

_Teddy shrugged. He felt nauseous. Luther kissed the hinge of his jaw, almost sweetly._

_“Go on, just for one fuck. Bet it would be tight. Just wanna fuck your tight little fanny, Teddy.”_

_Luther laughed then, as if it was funny. So Teddy laughed too, as if they were just joking around. And he did it, for Luther, because it was just one fuck. And it wasn’t as if he’d never done it before._

It wasn’t a memory that Teddy allowed to surface often. His tears had stopped now, replaced by an aching throat and a dull nausea at the thought of Remus doing the same thing to Tonks. And why not? If today had proven anything it was that no one in Teddy’s life had really known Remus. He could have been anyone. Done anything.

Teddy wiped his running nose and looked back at the photo. He watched Remus nestle closer to his lover, peaceful and young. The connection between them was palpable, even in two dimensions. And Remus hadn’t been much older than Teddy was now when he had lost this man for the first time. And then, fifteen years later, he lost him again. Teddy couldn’t even imagine what that might turn someone into. But then–

 _“Dora was the only one who poor Remus would open up to,”_ his Gran had said. “ _I’d never seen her like that with anyone.”_

_“They did love each other a lot.”_

Before Luther, hadn’t Teddy fantasized about a partner who would want to be with him no matter what form his body took?

What if a gay man could offer Tonks some way of relating that a straight man couldn’t? Teddy had seen plenty of pictures of his mother- the short, brightly colored hair, the boyish clothes. He knew she demanded to be called Tonks rather than Nymphadora. Of course he had wondered.

No one knew better than him what it was like to live in a body that shifted. More than once he had stood in front of a mirror and grown breasts, made his face rounder, his hips wider, his hair longer. Before Luther, he had lain in bed at night with a hand on his cock and felt it shrink to a tiny bundle of fiercely sensitive nerves; prodded in awe at a second hole, softer and wetter than the other; rubbed himself and come in a shock of singing collisions all over his body. He didn’t do it anymore–couldn’t, without thinking of how it had changed Luther too. Made him grab rougher, push harder, listen less.

But still, he knew the joy of the shift, and the yearning for someone to understand what defied words. Sometimes he thought of telling Victoire, but he had known her his whole life. He could imagine only too clearly the way her brow would furrow.

 _“I want you to be happy, Teddy,”_ she might say, “ _but you know I’m straight, right?”_

Which, of course, is and isn’t the point at all.

It was comforting to imagine that Remus might have been able to recognize something of it in Tonks. Poetic even, that the metamorphmagus and the werewolf would raise a child together. A little shape shifter family.

Teddy wasn’t sure he could believe that it was that nice of a thing. It seemed too neat somehow, for two people who came together in the midst of war and heartbreaking loss. But the idea of it felt warm in Teddy’s chest, an explanation he could live with.

So he drank the rest of his now-lukewarm tea to soothe his throat and stuck the photograph to the wall by his dresser. He took his time getting ready for bed, not wanting to dislodge the warmth.

And once he was under his quilt in the dark he let himself imagine it as it might have been. He imagined a bigger flat, with three bedrooms and walls painted in warm colors. He imagined a bookcase where their books all bled into each other’s. A kitchen where Tonks and Remus both produced barely edible meals, which he stomached until he was old enough to take over the cooking. A record player that Remus turned on in the evenings, raising Teddy on the classics. An easel by the window where Tonks painted, like she had when she was younger.

A home where he never had to explain that a person doesn’t have to be one thing or another.

He imagined bringing a boy, faceless and kind, into their hearth of a home for the first time. Tonks teasing him, Remus smiling his crinkle-eyed smile, stealing kisses in the kitchen while his parents cheerfully debated something like changing broomstick regulations or muggle technology integration in the living room.

And gradually his imaginings melted into brightly colored dreams, where a metamorphmagus grew a beard and retracted it over and over, and a great wolf and a black dog curled into each other in a field of blooming violets, and his sweet, faceless boy plucked one of the violets and tucked it behind Teddy’s ear.

 _“Beautiful,”_ the boy said. _“Beautiful.”_

**Author's Note:**

> A couple more notes if you're interested:  
> 1) I decided entirely for my own convenience that at some point the garage where all of Sirius' things were being stored was going to be demolished or something and Tonks made Remus move all of the stuff into his flat. I think that was the only time Remus returned after he and Sirius left for Grimmauld Place at the end of All The Young Dudes.  
> 2) If you are into the shapeshifter-y, fluid way that Teddy is experiencing gender in this fic, check out Paul Takes The Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor! It hard core inspired my approach.  
> 3) I have plans for a full length fic of roughly nine chapters extending from this one, but given my track record with finishing projects I start I'm not making any promises that I'll ever finish it. I think this stands on its own just fine though!


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